The country-pop superstar died today at age 89. Arnold's crooning voice and smooth songs helped to shepherd in the Nashville Sound, creating crossover success for country music on the pop charts.
I don't listen to much Eddy Arnold (I generally like my country as honky-tonk as it can get), but he has a special place in my heart because he's one of my dad's favorite singers, and we listened to him all the time in our car when I was a kid. My sister and I couldn't stand the yodel-heavy "Cattle Call" at the time, but I've since been known to listen to it many times on repeat. It's an awfully pretty song.
posted by
Christopher DeLaurenti
on
May 2 at
2:41 PM
Bebe Barron (1925-2008) With her husband Louis, Bebe worked with John Cage on the Project for Magnetic Tape and composed the landmark soundtrack to the film Forbidden Planet, which exposed millions to electronic music. Pioneers of circuit-bending and of the kitchen sink-approach to electronic music, the Barrons (pictured below) were willing to try anything to make new and unusual sounds, including building self-destructing circuits. "Prepare your minds for a new scale of scientific values..." and see some of Forbidden Planet.
Henry Brant (1913-2008) A 20th century pioneer of heterogeneous ensembles and acoustic spatialization, Brant took the concept of antiphonal performance (think brass choirs in opposite balconies during the time of Giovanni Gabrieli) to new heights: His oratorio, Wind, Water, Clouds & Fire, calls for three women's choruses, a children's chorus, woodwinds, six trumpets, percussion, harp, piano, ten violins, and organ. Several years ago, the Seattle Flute Society performed Brant's "Ghosts and Gargoyles" for flute ensemble; flutists ringed Town Hall's main hall. The music, a kind of glacial, surround-sound Gregorian chant, was captivating.
Tristram Cary (1925-2008) A pioneer and fine composer of electronic music, Cary co-designed one the great synths of the analog age, the EMS VCS 3. Unfortunately the documentary, "What The Future Sounded Like," which features Cary prominently, has been removed from youtube. Here's a more in-depth obituary.
Jimmy Giuffre (1921-2008) Apart from his essential role in West Coast jazz, the reedman helped pioneer freely improvised music with his ill-fated 1962 album Free Fall. The trio that recorded Free Fall - Giuffre, bassist Steve Swallow, and pianist Paul Bley - disbanded soon after a gig that earned each member 35 cents apiece for a set. Alas, wages for experimental music makers have hardly risen since.
Too many amazing musicians have died recently. To cheer myself up, I watched an episode of The Subject is Jazz with pianist Billy Taylor and composer George Russell. Scan ahead to the six minute mark for "Concerto for Billy the Kid," which features pianist Bill Evans and remains one of Russell's best pieces. It's also a treat to see the underrated trombonist Jimmy Cleveland.
"Billy" showcases Russell's gift for making tightly scripted pieces that nonetheless welcome unusual timbres: Note that the drummer continually hits the nipple of the cymbal (near the nut) for a high, ringing tone; Cleveland's tiny polyphonic emendations around 6'40"; and, at the first piano break, Bill Evans doubles his part two octaves up for a bell-like sound.
I also like how Evans' one-hand solo at 8'30" - unusual for the absence of left hand comping - thins out the overall texture. By contrast, trumpeter Art Farmer's marvelous bit at 10'03" cuts through a denser field: a ride cymbal and passages injected by the trombone and saxophone.
Alas, the bass and guitar (guitarist Barry Galbraith falls behind in the first section) remain mostly inaudible in this clip; to really hear the work's polyrhythmic frisson, find the out of print Jazz Workshop recording released in 1990 on RCA or the cheaper import disc "Complete Bluebird Recordings."
And yes, the host of The Subject of Jazz, Gilbert Seldes, is a tad stuffy, but when the program aired in 1958, jazz and other improvised musics had yet to win recognition as a field worthy of respect and serious study. Seldes was fighting the good fight.
posted by
Casey Catherwood, Unpaid Intern
on
April 30 at
2:38 PM
Someone please, please, PLEASE, take The Stranger's music internship off of my hands. It has been month after grueling month of "do this" and "do that", and I simply can't take it anymore. While I can't promise they'll give you school credit or sign any papers to prove you were an intern, I can promise that Eric Grandy will drive you into the ground with pointless crap to do. Megan Seling, despite what you may think, is a raging beast in person, and the office gets really stuffy at times. Candidates with allergies should rethink their ambitions. I hear Quiznos is hiring.
If this sounds fun, which it isn't, you should totally send your applications to megan@thestranger.com
I pine for a night of sleep without clublist related nightmares haunting my slumber so...
SEND! SEND! SEND! APPLY! APPLY! THIS IS THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME!
posted by
Larry Mizell, Jr.
on
April 22 at
5:19 PM
Rest In Peace to one of the unheralded greats of R&B. Wilson died from kidney failure at age 68. Here he is on Soul Train, doing his biggest hit, "Show And Tell".
Radiohead wrote the song “Karma Police” specifically for this Kentucky man who fishes snapping turtles out of ponds with his bare hands.
His name is Ernie Brown Jr. and he’s known as the Turtle Man. He’s missing his front teeth because he knocked them out with a chainsaw. He’s missing a majority of his brain cells because his mother is his sister. He doesn’t drink, do drugs, or smoke cigarettes, but he does catch the ever-living hell out of snapping turtles with his bare hands.
Watching the video, you just can’t help but hope one the turtles will bite his nuts off. And that is why when he dies and passes into the next world, Ernie Brown Jr. will pass into an eternity of snapping turtles biting his nuts off. He will wake up every day with balls, and every day they will be bitten off by an angry snapping turtle when he does his Indian victory cry.
...the end of the day. It took 14 years. It was a long run. And lot of local writers, including myself, got a start in music journalism in its pages.
RESONANCE MAGAZINE BIDS FAREWELL TO 14 YEARS OF PUBLISHING
Seatlle-based (in a Wallingford attic, to be precise), nationally distributed, music and arts magazine Resonance ceases print production in January 2008. From publisher Andrew Monko:
To our dear friends and supporters:
In January 2008, immediately before going to press with our 55th issue, we were forced to stop printing Resonance. The financial challenge of publishing an independent magazine finally overwhelmed us. Fueled by the tireless support of many people (readers, subscribers, staff, freelancers, advertisers, publicists, as well as long-suffering spouses and significant others), we stubbornly survived on a shoestring budget and volunteer staff for 14 years. Such a business model isn’t sustainable forever.
According to Glenn Sabin, Guthrie's CEO, the publication struggled to become profitable. "We purchased Harp in 2003, and it quickly became a first class product that was highly acclaimed for its often irreverent editorial approach and strong graphical package. Unfortunately, Harp's critical acclaim never translated into sustaining commercial success. Harp's lifecycle was ill timed with the precipitous decline of the music software industry, coupled with the consolidation of the consumer magazine newsstand business and rising paper and postage costs".
Sabin saw Harp's demise as reflective of the changes both in the music industry and in print consumer publishing. Sabin continued, "This story isn't new. Print consumer publishing and the music industry are undergoing a revolutionary period. Legal digital sales are not even close to making up for the loss in physical product sales and the pervasiveness of illegal digital downloads. And with smaller revenues, labels are inevitably spending less money for print and other forms of advertising and promotion."
Gah, ain't that story ridiculously familiar. I spent my plane rides to and from SXSW poring through No Depression and Harp--the former, the all-too-recent victim of such music-print pitfalls, and the latter, the supposed replacement for my refined musical bathroom reading needs. And they're both really darn good--balanced and varied coverage (yes, even No Depression steps outside the Lucinda Williams echelon) with a solid, authoritative editorial voice (as in, NOT Paste). What's shocking is that there's still at least one more issue of ND in the can, set to come out in a month or so, but Harp's immediately through. Dead. Done. No mas.
I'm all for blogs--uh, obviously--but are we seeing the beginning of the end for the truly independent feature-heavy musical perspective? The last part's the key--long, reporting-intensive stories that range from multi-interview expositions on a band to ruminations on all ends of the industry. Pitchfork has its columns sidebar, but I'm not printing those out and taking them to the can, and I don't know who is. What I do know is that these two magazine closures are the beginning of a severe domino effect, devastating for other small publishers and wild for new ventures trying to step in and catch the windfall ("We'll target the music fans whose eyes you just lost with our, er, bong-shaped MP3 player line").
(By the way, I do not know if that last part in parentheses is actually a business strategy that Grandy and co. are looking into. Hey, times is tough.)
Since nothing has been announced as far as a continuing online presence, I assume this is it for Harp as an entity, though that's not to say its core staff won't come up with something. Still, Harp, the beloved paper product, will be missed. Best of luck to Scott Crawford and the rest of the mag's tiny full-time crew.
Radio disc jock Mikey Dread is dead. He succumbed to a brain tumour late yesterday afternoon at his family home in Connecticut, USA at the age of 54. Born Michael Campbell in Port Antonio, Jamaica, he distinguished himself as an extraordinary studio engineer and presenter at the now defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) where he came to prominence in the 1970s as "The Dread-the-Control Tower", the name of the late night show he presented at a time when reggae music was scoffed at by many. Mikey Dread... hailed as one of reggae's greatest innovators.
And they want I to go to the funeral. But I go to no man's funeral. Let the dead bury the dead, I'm a living man and got things to do.
Swedish super-band ABBA's long-time drummer Ola Brunkert was found dead in his Mallorca, Spain home over the weekend.
Spanish police say the gruesome death was caused by a freak accident in which Brunkert bled to death after puncturing his throat with a broken piece of glass. According to CNN, police believe the drummer may have fallen against a glass partition that separated his kitchen from his garden, causing the glass to break and fatally cut his throat.
Brunkert was not one of the four "famous" members of ABBA, but was a studio drummer who played on all their albums.
Buddy Miles, the rock and R&B drummer, singer and songwriter whose eclectic career included stints playing with Jimi Hendrix and as the lead voice of the California Raisins, the animated clay figures that became an advertising phenomenon in the late 1980s, has died. He was 60.
Miles died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, according to an announcement on his website.
A massive man with a distinctive, sculpted afro, Miles hit his peak of popularity when he joined Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, which the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll called "the first black rock group." Miles had played with Hendrix on the guitarist's influential "Electric Ladyland" album released in 1968.
posted by
Charles Mudede
on
February 21 at
1:32 PM
Narcocorrido music makes gansta rap look like a walk in the park:
Popular Mexican singer Jesus Rey David Alfaro was found murdered along with his manager and assistant. Alfaro, known as The Little Rooster, and six others were tortured, murdered and pinned with messages for the Mexican army.
The musicians, who sing “narcocorrido” songs glorifying drug traffickers, were the latest murdered in the drug war between Tijuana’s main drug trafficking group Arellano Felix and traffickers lead by Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman. At least 6 other “narcocorrido” singers have been murdered in the war.
“We believe Alfaro had links to the Arellano Felix cartel,” said an official.
A note reading “You’ll be next” was pinned to Alfaro’s body. He was found in a wasteland on the edge of Tijuana. Rope marks could be seen on his neck. Officials say they believe he Alfaro was tortured before he was shot in the head.
Here's The Little Rooster in a happy moment of his short life"
OMG, a record store is going out of business!!! Oh wait - that happens all the time, because we have the internet now. Anybody running a record store now who doesn't expect to be forced into shutting down in the next 5 years should be given a Gold Star for Baseless Optimism.
Fremont's got more character than the rest of the city has in its big toe. I really doubt the passing of one record shop heralds the coming of the condo antichrist. (Not that he isn't coming, of course...)
Pooper, you see, sometimes people fall in love with record stores. For those who had fallen in love with the Fremont Sonic Boom as a place to physically be while browsing and buying music, please, let us mourn.
Photographer Bill Anthony took these pictures and had this to say about the closing of the Fremont Sonic Boom:
Seattle keeps breakin' my heart man. So help me, if they ever close the Buckaroo Tavern, I hope this town slides into the Puget Sound leaving nothing behind but dirty bubbles rising to the surface.
Resonance Magazine is dead (at least as a print publication).
From editor Andrew Monko:
For now, Resonance as a media vehicle is on hiatus, and continuing a printed version at a future date appears unlikely. A more viable return route may be to phoenix online with a site devoted to the same vision (and with a massively diminished carbon footprint). We shall see.
Krakt is dead come April (at least as a monthly).
From promoter Kristina Childs:
April will be the last Krakt as a club night. It's been a great run, and i thank everyone who's supported over the years, and hope those faces i haven't seen in a while will come back for the final two parties.
so here's the plan:
March - Kris Moon's Farewell Seattle Party: Derek Plaslaiko (Spectral / NYC), Kris Moon (live pa), Kristina Childs
April - Last Krakt - line-up TBD
Krakt is not dying, i'm just burned out and need a break. there will be krakt parties in the future, but it'll be anywhere from 1-4 parties per year. we'll see.
Jakarta, Indonesia (AHN) - Ten people were crushed to death and at least six others were wounded when hundreds of fans of a famous Indonesian rock band caused a stampede at a jam packed concert Saturday in Bandung, capital of West Java in Indonesia, police said Sunday.
According to witnesses, hundreds of teenage fans of the heavy metal band group "Besides" attended the concert at a building in Bandung with a capacity for only 700 people. Hundreds of fans were trying to get out of the crowded building while hundreds more were surging to get in causing people to be trampled or crushed to death.
Tonight was the "funeral" for a house of many parties, the Holy Land. It was truly an honorable farewell. These kids know how to keep a dance floor moving; how to cram a grip of people into a cozy central district home. Consolations, congratulations, and farewell, for now.
posted by
Jonathan Zwickel
on
January 10 at
6:15 PM
Just got the news from Light in the Attic's Matt Sullivan: Dave Havlicek, aka Dave Day, guitarist and banjo player for legendary proto-punk band the Monks, died today. According to Sullivan, Day, who was born and lived in Renton, suffered a stroke or a heart attack on Sunday morning. He spent this week in the hospital before finally succumbing this morning.
All the members of the Monks were American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-'60s. They began playing together in 1964, calling themselves the 5 Torquays. The Torquays differed little from other bands of the time: They covered Chuck Berry songs and played music inspired by the British beat groups. But the band experimented together musically.
and
Dave Day replaced his guitar with a six-string, gut-strung banjo upon which he played guitar chords. This instrument sounds much more metallic, scratchy, and wiry than a standard electric guitar.
and
The Monks are one of the many bands mentioned in the song "Losing My Edge" by LCD Soundsystem.
There's a huge backstory to these guys, which I'll leave to our resident garage rock savant Mike Nipper to tell in a proper obituary tomorrow. Suffice to say the music is really something else, something unique--primal, tribal, freakish, stylized, and made all the more so by the fact it was originally made in 1966.
This is one of those times when you feel like an asshole for catching on to what's clearly a very, very cool thing after somebody dies. I talked with Dave Day a couple times at Light in the Attic events--he was a badass and a sweetheart, he and his wife Irene hanging tough with the kids, drinking beers, smoking cigs, and shooting the shit. He told me he invented punk rock and opened for Jimi Hendrix. Watching these YouTube vids--and there are several, mostly taken from German TV in 1966--I believe the claim.
"Early this morning Michael Griffen died. He was the violinist in Behead the Prophet No Lord Shall Live and played in the noise duo Noggin and many other projects along the way. His contribution to music was very significant as a huge proponent of Improvised Noise. Michael encouraged anyone curious about music regardless of talent and got a lot of people started on a path to true creative expression. I am greatly thankful for my experience with Michael as an individual, as a fellow musician and to know his family who have been a family to me when I needed a one that accepted me for who I am without judgment. I am currently working on a documentary about Michael with a friend Peter Rand that hopefully will be completed within the next year. Much Love to you all, I know that Michael believed in Love, - Jordan Rain"
I saw Behead the Prophet in a basement back in high school and it was truly wild. Condolences to Griffen's friends and family.
Although born to privilege as the daughter of Sir Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, Ms. Spencer-Churchill rebelled early.
“I was no good at being a Churchill,” she told the newspaper The Independent this summer. She had been a model in the late 1960s, a hippie traveling in Africa and Asia, and a squatter in London running a restaurant for fellow squatters before finding a more settled life in Glastonbury.
Arriving in 1971 in Glastonbury, then a sleepy town in the Thomas Hardy countryside of Somerset, she worked with a friend to organize a festival marking the summer solstice.... [She] told The Independent that she had found contentment at Glastonbury, and, in the festival’s success, a sense that she was a worthy Churchill after all.
“When you think that it’s run by old duffers like Michael and me,” she said, speaking of Mr. Eavis, “the fact that so many people want to be there is very flattering.
“So actually, you know, I don’t think I’ve let the family down at all, have I?”
No, Ms. Spencer-Churchill, you didn't. The world needs more thoughtful, creative and amazing people like Arabella Spencer-Churchill.
Country music stars in Mexico are being killed at an alarming rate - 13 in the past year and a half, 3 already in December - in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here.
On Dec. 1, Zayda Peńa, the raven-haired lead singer of Zayda y Los Culpables, was shot in a motel room in Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas. She survived the attack, but the killers followed her to the hospital and finished her off with two more bullets as she lay in bed later that day.
One of the most shocking attacks came when Sergio Gómez, the founder and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped while leaving a concert in his home state of Michoacán early on a Sunday morning, Dec. 9.
He was found the next day dumped on a roadside outside this capital city. He had been beaten, tortured with a cigarette lighter, then strangled to death with a plastic cord, officials said. He was 34 and had just been nominated for a Grammy Award.
posted by
Jonathan Zwickel
on
December 14 at
2:42 PM
We have a GREAT obituary for Ike Turner coming out next week. The author is Stan Becker, a longtime music journalist who interviewed Ike at the Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo in 1991, where he was doing time for parole violation after his 11th drug-related arrest. Becker's original interview piece--written for the Chicago Tribune--was 3,000-some words long, far longer than the space we can allow in The Stranger. Some highlights:
"I think I was on a 15-year party," Turner says. "Everybody who goes through cocaine wants to quit, but stopping is harder than you think." Turner spent almost $25,000 on drug-rehab programs but contends: "None of this stuff don't really do no good, man. First of all, you have to make up your mind to quit. I never did drugs till I was 44 years old. I used to fire people if I caught them with even a roach, and now I got a hole in my nose that you could put your ink pen in."
He first took cocaine while playing the lounge at the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Redd Foxx in the casino and Elvis headlining the main room. "Two very famous people came backstage; one of them is dead now," he remembers. "These two guys gave me some coke in a dollar. I went home, and after Tina and all the kids went to sleep, I sat down at the piano and put some in my nose.
"I didn't feel nothing. I didn't think I ever got high. I was just sitting there writing and the next thing I know it's 11 o'clock in the morning and I'm still writing. I thought, `This is cool, man, I'm not even tired!' So I just went on to liking it. I had it sitting out in big bowls. I used to give away $50,000 of that stuff every six weeks."
Although it has been 14 years since the breakup of his marriage to Tina, the memories are fresh, and a bond, however convoluted and strained, is apparent. "I love Tina, but I don't like her today," Turner says. "She is not what you think, man. She's got more nerve than anybody. She says she was brainwashed." He shakes his head. "I don't know where this (expletive) comes from, man. Before me, Tina was a nurse's aide," he says pointedly. "She's said this (expletive) so much she's begun to believe it herself."
"In our whole life we only had six or seven fights. I'm not violent," he says, defensive and unrepentant. "I had a temper" is his only concession to Tina's memories of the beatings. Several times during the interview, however, he mentions how the "old Ike" would have handled this or that.
What, he is asked, would he say to Tina if she were in the room right now? He pauses for a long time. "Don't forget where you came from," he says softly. "For her to forget... things like this hurt me."
Becker also forwarded a YouTube video of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, filmed for TV appearance sometime in the early 1960s. HOLY SHIT THIS SMOKES:
I was kind of unaware of just how blazingly hot Ike and Tina and the band were. This video makes everything clear.
Michael Jackson is going to do a residency at London's O2 Arena next year.
Michael Jackson thinks a lengthy run can ease his money problems:
The general consensus is that Michael has the fan base to attract enough people from all over the world to make this a huge success.
Booking the O2 up for more than a couple of nights might seem a big gamble on his and his promoters' part, but just think of the history. People will flock to witness Michael cover his back catalogue.
Whitney Houston is rumored to be the other artist taking up a "big residency" next year.
Michael and Whitney, sweet. Whitney, a residency? Think of the history. I know the topic of Michael has been over-written. But godamnit, Off the Wall is a solid album. It was 1979, Michael met Quincy Jones on the set of the Wiz. Magic was made. “Rock with You” is not only a good song, it’s a good rollerskating song. Fuck. Then Michael had to fuck everything up with his diseased mind. Fuck you, Michael, I rollerskated to that song and loved it so much. I ate Cocoa Pebbles to that song. How am I supposed to listen to it now? Consensus that, motherfucker. Back catalogue? What about the back catalogue of those kids Michael diddled? Fuck that sick fucker.
RIP
He Made it Nice... and ROUGH: Ike Turner Dead at 76
posted by
Jonathan Zwickel
on
December 12 at
3:25 PM
Seventy-six years is far longer than most expected Ike Turner to keep on, let alone keep on rolling. Though he never surpassed his career high-points of the mid-'70s with ex-wife Tina Turner, Ike's Risin' with the Blues won the "Best Traditional Blues" Grammy earlier this year, though nobody you know actually heard the record.
Ike Turner is credited in some circles--mainly his own--as recording the first rock song, "Rocket 88," in 1951. Many know of Ike's basso-profundo contribution to Ike & Tina's version of "Proud Mary," and most revile his often violent Svengali-ism and his piggybacking on Tina's career as depicted in the 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do With It. During the late '70s, after his divorce from Tina, Ike fell into a debilitating cocaine addiction from which he and his image never recovered; Tina's ascending star left Ike far below.
Ike repeatedly denied Tina's depiction of him as a drug-addled manipulator and never understated his role in creating both rock 'n' roll and the Tina mystique. ''You can go ask Snoop Dogg or Eminem, you can ask the Rolling Stones or Clapton, or you can ask anybody--anybody--they all know my contribution to music,'' Tuner said in a 2001 Associated Press interview.
Turner was in his San Diego home at the time of death. No cause of death has been released as of yet.
As some may already know, legendary disco label West End Records founder Mel Cheren died on Saturday due to AIDS complications. Cheren, aka "The Godfather of Disco" was the driving force in '70s gay disco culture, financially backing the legendary gay nightclub the Paradise Garage, home to deejay Larry Levan. Cheren helped put out some of disco's greatest records including Loose Joints' Is It All Over My Face, Michele's Disco Dance, Taana Gardner's Heartbeat, Billy Nichols's Give Your Body Up To The Music, and many many more. In the 1980's Cheren spent most of his time dedicated to being an activist in the HIV/AIDS community and earlier this year, Cheren's biography, My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin', was turned into the documentary film The Godfather Of Disco. Mel Cheren is a true legend, whom's legacy and contributions will forever stand the test of time.
In tribute to Mel Cheren, here is one of my favorite West End tracks, the Bomber's 1979 disco classic (Everybody) Get Dancin' - A hi-energy disco gem produced by Pat DeSerio.
posted by
Christopher DeLaurenti
on
December 7 at
10:52 AM
One of the bravest, boldest composers of the 20th century has died. I first heard about Stockhausen's passing on a tiny listserv and just couldn't believe it. Alas, now The Guardian and the BBC have the official word, though Ivan Hewitt's obituary, much like his misguided reading of the avant garde in Music: Healing the Rift, misses the mark.
Earlier this March, I wrote a Turn You On column about the great composer. To my surprise and eternal delight, I eventually heard that Stockhausen was immensely pleased with the piece. My tribute is hardly complete and neglects to address Stockhausen's contributions to improvised music, opera, and music notation; I also omitted his far-reaching influence as a teacher, but Stockhausen merits a book, not a blurb.
posted by
Larry Mizell, Jr.
on
December 4 at
5:12 PM
Chad Butler- AKA Pimp C, 1/2 of the legendary Port Arthur, TX rap group UGK, was found dead in his hotel room at the Mondrian in LA this morning. The coroner believes Pimp passed due to natural causes.
Pimp C is forever immortalized by the classic Dirty South grind-rap he and partner Bun B originated- perhaps even more than the Geto Boys, UGK was the blueprint for today's hardcore Southern hiphop; the younger generation of Dixie spitters paid nonstop homage to Pimp during his incarceration years back, putting 'Free Pimp C' in the mouths of rap lovers worldwide.
As I write this, a song off of UGK's long-awaited 2007 double-disc reunion album Underground Kingz came on my Ipod. Toast to a pioneer, the very definition of trill. Rest In peace, mane.
Blabbermouth is reporting Kevin DuBrow, the suspender-wearing lead singer of Quiet Riot, was found dead at his home in Las Vegas over the weekend. Quiet Riot was the first metal band to have its debut album hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts when Metal Health--featuring a cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize," which was a staple of old-school MTV--knocked the Police's Synchronicity out of the top spot in 1983. The band was still releasing albums and touring, and they played a set at the Rocklahoma festival over the summer. DuBrow was 52.
Also, Casey Calvert, guitarist for Hawthorne Heights (the ex-Victory band that left the label and then sued 'em), was found dead on the band's tour bus after a show in D.C. The band insists he wasn't doing anything illegal (so no drugs), and an autopsy will be done. Calvert, who got married about a year ago, was 25.
posted by
Sam Machkovech
on
November 20 at
6:52 AM
If you're flying anywhere this Thanksgiving, you're already fucked. Least as I can tell from my many hours in terminals yesterday, anyway. The folks on the plane right before mine had their flight up-and-canceled, and every plane coming and going in my connecting city was delayed on an average of an hour. That's just on pre-THX Monday, man.
Good thing I packed some music mags--"printed blogs," like Sonic Boom's mag rack sez, remember 'em? I picked this month's Magnet based solely on the fact that it had a review of the People Take Warning! box set (advice: GET), and the issue's fine; has a kind review of Invitation Songs; has a nice feature on The Mendoza Line's final album (whose label, Seattle's Glurp Records, is featured in a piece of mine this week in the printed Line Out). But the issue's back page column drove me nuts.
It goes on about Glen Hansard from The Frames, making a stink about the sudden publicity his band landed through the movie Once, which he wrote music for. Goes on and on about those who've sought fame in rock music versus those who've postured grandly about shunning it, about being undernoticed (citing The Mendoza Line) versus making it too big. To make his point, author Phil Sheridan brings out the ol' shotgun:
The push-and-pull I'm talking about is what destroyed Kurt Cobain. When you look out into the audience and see the people you hate--or more to the point, the people who previously hated you--singing along to your most personal thoughts and feelings, that will seriously fuck up your shit. And poor Kurt's shit was so fucked up, he could only think of one way out of the trap.
Citing suicide to prove a point is one thing; going so far as to explain why someone committed that suicide is another. I'm not saying Sheridan's Kurt-pothesis is way off the mark, but isn't it a rock-writer cliche to reference Cobain as if we're so close to his plight? Like we're sitting on the bed with him, handing him shotgun shells and patting him on the back, because we know his every, final thought? Not buying it. Unless Courtney's sold you the guy's archived brainwave logs (and, lord knows, she'll try at some point), it's ultimately conjecture, and that it merely solidifies a mag's back-page opinion makes it worse, far as I'm concerned. You have a million other rock burnout examples to pick from that're better documented. Fat Elvis, maybe?
Cobain's an easy way out for writers, so I think it's time to call a music-crit moratorium on referencing him. In fact, I'm tempted to add some strikethroughs to his name throughout this post...because, man, that's what Kurt would've wanted.
The shifting sands will forever continue to move back and forth beneath our feet, and the winds of change will never stop blowing and making our hair look just so, am I right?
I am.
And tomorrow, those sands and winds bring one of my most beloved dance parties to an end. Ruff Gemz, the sacred weirdo-fest full of the kind of dance music I want to hear (punk, electro, queer) and $1 beer, is coming to it's prolonged end. DJ Fucking in the Streets (our own Eric Grandy, natch) and Sam Rousso Soundsystem will be spinning for free.
Do yourself a favor and go. Get stoned in the dog park, walk one block up to the Baltic Room, get a stamp, drink four beers, dance with Mr. Spazztastic (you'll know him when you see him), get a slice at Juliano's next door, go back and dance until they kick you out. You won't regret it, and you will know how the section of the population you most admire lived every Wednesday night for approximately the last year and a half.
(Consider this a replacement for my usual Illegal Leak of the Week post.)
Jeff, the cell phone towers blew up?! Good Christ, man. First off, like many have said before me, something else will be along in OiNK's stead before too long, and in spite of your worries, the next thing will be more robust than any freeloader/downloader deserves (just as Soulseek was better than Napster, just as OiNK was better than SuprNova). In fact, if you wait a coupl'a weeks and do a little digging, you'll find a fair share of private torrent sites still in existence that will cater to your non-mainstream tastes.
But even if that weren't the case...is the site's death really that awful?
If someone from the Dutch government were to bust down my door today and go after my hard drives, I'd try to apply a very odd (and probably awful) defense--I've barely listened to any of what's in there. In my two years of OiNK membership, I downloaded at least 800 music torrents. Probably way more than that, as I've lost count, and more than a few of those were deluxe box sets. Some were things I downloaded just for the helluvit (read: Britney), and some have proven to be great surprises that drove me to the record store. But most have been lost in the shuffle of endless downloads. Like most torrent tracker sites, OiNK had a "Top 50" feature to rank torrents by popularity, either for the day or the week, and that feature put a lot of weird or unpublicized albums on my radar that I might've never bothered with otherwise. But the drawback was that it created a compulsion to gorge and gorge and gorge.
As a result, I've found myself not sitting with albums and giving them the kind of loving, replay treatment that I did years ago, back when I only downloaded something based on a great magazine review, a great concert or a friend's suggestion. This is a pervasive problem in the world of MP3 blogs, as people grow too eager to announce and jump on a new act because it seems to stand out from the hectic MP3 fray...and based on the blogosphere's reaction to OiNK, and chats I've had with a few MP3 blogger friends, I've come to realize that those guys didn't just rely on OiNK. They fell into the same overload trap that I did.
Perhaps I'm an exception to the OiNK experience and I'm projecting. Based on the stats of the site and the outpouring of music geek tears, though, I doubt it. Either way, I'm going to enjoy a break from checking that site six times a day. Gonna listen to a few records that have been collecting dust in the hard drive for at least the two weeks before the next great replacement assumedly takes shape.
Right now I feel like all the cell phone towers blew up and there will be no way to get a hold of anyone I care about ever again. There is an overwhelming sense that I have been abandoned, like I am isolated from the world I loved and cherished and my lifeline will never be re-established. I know there was a time before Oink, but it seems so hazy and distant, “the long-long ago” that now seems like such an implausible reality.
My friend Kellen came over last night with a new record from a Virginia band called the Catalyst, a bunch of teenagers making really great hardcore. I was impressed, and I wanted to have it immediately, and then it struck me like a flaming arrow: I couldn’t. I couldn’t just hop on my computer and download it instantly. Sure, bigger torrent sites have bigger bands, but this was obscure indie rock that only Oink was sure to have. I liked the EP enough that I’ll probably buy it myself when I get the chance, but until then I want to listen to it, and now I can’t. It’s fucking devastating.
The real frustrating part is that I’m not sure if there will ever be a site quite like Oink ever again. Since it was invite only all the bullshit worry of low quality rips and getting a virus were nil, and the gratification was instant. Albums downloaded in literally a minute; the world’s catalogue of music was at my immediate disposal. And for those of us with a conscience, the system was truly “try before you buy.” I like owning records, and I like supporting good bands. I don’t like buying an album blind and having it be bullshit. Oink was downloading for connoisseurs, for people with discernable, under the radar tastes. Unfortunately, it was also the source of most of the major label leaks, popping up on Oink first before working their way to the other major peer-to-peer sites, and that's what got them busted. Now that Oink's gone, if I want to a popular release I can just grab it off of Mininova or something and it will probably be fine. But if I want to hear what some teenagers from Virginia are doing I’m shit out of luck. And there is a dark hole in my guts because of it.
So I am in mourning, as are most of my friends. I am well aware of the virtues of patience, and I condemn most aspects of a fast-food society. But damn it, I liked getting my obscure bands the instant I wanted them. Until I get that back, I fear my now oppressively slow intake of new music may send me into the depths.
Ministry Bassist Paul Raven Dies of Heart Attack in Geneva
October 20, 2007 FRANCE - Ministry's bassist Paul Raven was found dead today in a private home in a small French village on the Swiss border. Initial reports indicate Raven's passing was due to a heart attack. Raven (known also for his work with Killing Joke, Prong) was in Geneva working with French recording artists Treponem Pal on their new release, with Marco Neves, Ted Parsons (Prong) and members of The Young Gods.
Born in Wolverhampton UK on January 16, 1961, Paul Vincent Raven established himself with his work in the seminal post-punk/industrial group Killing Joke when, in 1982 he replaced the original bassist for the band, recording and touring with the group throughout its most commercially successful period, performing on Fire Dances, Night Time and Brighter than a Thousand Suns. Throughout his extensive career, Raven participated in other collaborations including Prong, Murder, Inc., Pigface, Godflesh.
Most recently, Raven was nominated for a 2006 Grammy for Best Metal Performance for his work with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, with whom he had begun working with in late 2005 on the 13th Planet release Rio Grande Blood. After a 2006 World Tour with Ministry, Raven helped Jourgensen and Prong's Tommy Victor pen the September 18, 2006 Ministry release The Last Sucker, Ministry's final studio release.
States Jourgensen: "I am in total shock. The world of music is a sadder, emptier place. Not only was Raven an extraordinary talent, but one of my closest dearest friends. Our condolences and prayers go to his immediate family. He will be truly missed by artists, musicians and his fans the world over.
The one consolation is knowing Raven's already hooked up with the right people and started a new project in the After Life. God's speed, Raven. Rest In Peace, you fucking pirate."
Raven's newest project, Mob Research, featuring members of Warrior Soul and The Mission UK, and schedule for release on 13th Planet Records in 2008, was in the final mixing and mastering phases at the time of Raven's sudden and unexpected passing.
A memorial dedicated to the Life and Art of Paul Raven can be found at www.thirteenthplanet.com.
We wanted to make sure we gave you information about local musician Slim McCarroll's death (He was a member of Los Hornets and the Vaccines). Since none of our staff members knew him, we are adapting our eulogy from the wonderful Kerri Harrop, who was good friends with the wife Slim leaves behind, Clare.
I had my reservations about Slim. He was punk rock, through and through, and a loyal JAK. I sure didn’t want to see this tattooed character crush my friend Clare's open heart. Those punker dudes were notorious heartbreakers.
I didn’t know Slim well, at all. By the time Slim and Clare's love was forged, the three of us girls were drifting apart. There was no animosity or drama, life had just taken us all on different paths. But, when those paths would cross, I would see how much he loved Clare. He was always respectful and kind when I would see him, and always had a complimentary word about his beautiful wife.
They fucking loved each other. More than I have ever seen in any couple.
There is something very pure and lifelong in friendships formed during your early 20’s. You become family. And, girlfriends during those years usually share an unbreakable bond. You know each other’s hearts.
My heart hurts for Clare. Her gigantic heart is broken.
As you know, Slim was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease this summer. Last month, in a horrible display of life’s capacity for cruelty, Slim was taken from this mortal coil, at the painfully young age of 41.
There are no words left to say.
Thank you Kerri, for letting us use your words to express our thoughts about Slim. We also want to tell you about the benefit show you can attend to help Clare and their two children out with the substantial medical costs they have been burdened with:
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20TH
A BENEFIT FOR SLIM JAK
with
THE KENT 3
THE RC5
TEXASS
THE MIDNIGHT IDOLS
THE EXCESSIVES
$10 - 8PM DOORS – 21+
NEUMO’S – 925 E. PIKE
If you are unable to attend the show, but still want to give to the cause, you can Paypal to the email slimbotex@yahoo.com.
Wilson was a founder of Factory Records in the late 1970s, the label behind Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays.
He continued to work in television even at the height of his work with Factory records.
In 1982, he set up The Hacienda nightclub, which became known as perhaps the most famous club in the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It became the heart of the "Madchester" scene, playing host to bands such as New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses and Oasis.
Even Madonna played her first UK gig at the Whitworth Street club in February 1983.
This doesn't seem legit enough to be true, but according to punknews.org, Reggie and the Full Effect have broken up. (Rather: James Dewees, who is Reggie and the Full Effect, is going to stop being Reggie and the Full Effect, since, you know, a guy can't really "break up" with himself.)
The cryptic MySpace message posted on Reggie's website goes like this:
sorry kids the joke is over, paying other peoples bills for so long that now i have to pay my own. oh yea and go see coalesce on their tour. you will see where i came from
I don't trust it. But maybe that's because I really don't want it to be true? Yeah, probably. At least Coalesce is getting back together!
In other 
As some may already know, legendary disco label West End Records founder Mel Cheren died on Saturday due to AIDS complications. Cheren, aka "The Godfather of Disco" was the driving force in '70s gay disco culture, financially backing the legendary gay nightclub the Paradise Garage, home to deejay Larry Levan. Cheren helped put out some of disco's greatest records including Loose Joints' Is It All Over My Face, Michele's Disco Dance, Taana Gardner's Heartbeat, Billy Nichols's Give Your Body Up To The Music, and many many more. In the 1980's Cheren spent most of his time dedicated to being an activist in the HIV/AIDS community and earlier this year, Cheren's biography, My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin', was turned into the documentary film The Godfather Of Disco. Mel Cheren is a true legend, whom's legacy and contributions will forever stand the test of time.
